Here’s mud in your eye!
IT’S not possible to question the commitment of Ryan Swart to the art of brewing.
The co-founder of the Durban Homebrewers Club estimates he has spent in the region of R100 000 on equipment, ingredients and building a small brewery alongside his mother’s home.
He has spent hundreds of hours brewing ales, lagers and stouts. He has a different glass for each style of brew and three taps at home connected to three different kegs of homemade beer.
He has created drinks with honey, with chocolate, with cranberry and with jasmine; he has even turned his hand to gin, port, whisky, wine, brandy and sake, the Japanese drink made from fermented rice.
The industrial-relations specialist, like other members of the club, doesn’t do this for financial gain. He doesn’t even particularly like beer. It’s done for the love of the process and the satisfaction of creating something that tastes good.
Home brewing is growing so rapidly, it’s almost a national pastime. In South Africa, no licence is needed to brew batches of less than 300 litres as long as the beer is consumed on site and is not sold.
The Durban Homebrewers Club began two years ago with six members. Today it is 82 strong and counting.
It is by no means the only homebrewing club in South Africa. In KwaZulu-Natal there is also East Coast Brewers; Wart Hogs Brewers has chapters in Gauteng; Yeastern Cape rules in the Eastern Cape and there are clubs in Bloemfontein, Helderberg and along the Garden Route.
“There are at least a dozen clubs across the country,” said Lucy Corne, author of two books on beer in South Africa, editor of On Tap, the only beer magazine in the country, and president of the Cape Town-based Southyeasters Homebrewing Club.
She said there had been massive growth in the hobby. “I went to my first home-brewing club meeting in 2010. There were about 30 members. Our mailing list is now over 700.”
The demographic had changed from old men with grey hair and beards to young men who “still have beards, but they are not grey”, said Corne.
This is not a home for hipsters, though — “it’s more for geeks and wannabe scientists”.
Swart, who cheerfully admits to being “obsessed” and something of a “mad scientist”, visited a sake brewery in Japan two years ago. He is now preparing his third batch of sake, which has to be kept in a temperature-controlled space and checked daily for 30 days.
He imports the rice and the spore needed to ferment the rice. It costs him around R1 500 to brew five litres of sake
He began brewing just three years ago, but it had been a longheld dream.
“When I was a kid my granddad would tell me stories about life in Zambia, where he worked on the mines. He and his friends would hold beer parties. Apparently they had to regularly drink all their beer so they could use the bottles for the new batch. They bought their hops from pharmacies. It seemed so strange to me. I had preconceived ideas of beer — I thought it only came from SAB.”
Three years ago he bought a brewing kit online, thinking it would be something to do with his father, who became his reluctant guinea pig.
He began to study brewing techniques, different styles of beers and then decided he needed a likeminded community to bounce ideas off, hence the club.
“We meet monthly, hold competitions, host beer-related events. There are restaurants that allow us to bring our beers and pair them with their food. There is a small business called BeerBro in Hillcrest who source and import everything and anything beerrelated and we buy through them.”
The Durban club runs an annual “Ales for Tails” event, open to the public, where different homemade brews may be sampled. The winner is voted for by the public and the proceeds go to the SPCA.
Swart likes to give his beverages as gifts. Some clients were given a single malt whisky last Christmas, others were given a pomegranate and grape wine — made from grapes grown in his garden.